As many users seek alternatives to X, rival social network Mastodon says that its official app downloads are up 47% on iOS.
Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko says downloads on Android are also up 17%, while total monthly sign-ups rose approximately 27% to 90,000.
The open-source X rival functions much like its competitor, the site formerly known as Twitter, on the outside. However, unlike the centralized Twitter, Mastodon consists of thousands of different social networks, which are integrated into a web it calls the “fediverse.”
Fantastic! I’m reducing my dependency on for profit entities every day, and federation is a great means to that end. Let’s welcome those moving over during the exodus!
Make sure to actually understand how those “non-profit” websites and services are functioning.
It costs money to power servers and to maintain them. Most of the fediverse instances like to claim they are run on donations and so forth. But… think about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.
Everyone is always shocked when they find out how social media or a “free” vpn or whatever is funded and where there information is going. But hey, I am sure it will be completely different this time.
You can be against the US’s tipping culture while at the same time being someone who donates to things lol
But yeah, definitely. For a lot of these things the funding has to be coming from somewhere and there’s no way donations are enough.
Proud to be part of that 47%
That’s good news. Odds are that some of those people will rebound back to closed media platforms; but the ones who stay help Mastodon and the Fediverse to grow.
Good to hear at least some upside for Mastadon from the recent rise in Bluesky users.
Hopefully this trend will continue and and Mastodon can retain at least a solid percentage of those why try it.
Considering that every post about Mastodon has supporters who get the spelling wrong, it might be a little much to expect the general public to figure it out. Bluesky is pretty much the VHS to Mastodon’s Betamax.
iOS friends, check out the Mastodon client Ice Cubes.
It’s free (beer and speech) and it’s very good IMO.
Also, after you settle on a server, consider setting up a recurring donation to your admin to help with server costs. The way I see it, it’s that or ads and enshitification.
Ice Cubes is a fantastic Mastodon client!
Does anyone know good people to follow? I’d rather not join Bluesky.
I learned to follow hashtags, not people on mastodon myself…
I joined bluesky because the weather group I followed on Twitter moved there, so deleted twitter and follow them on BLuesky now. Is there a reason not to join bluesky?
Don’t know who exactly you are interested in, here are some random known accounts:
- the EU commission (other EU institutions as well): https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission
- gog games: https://mastodon.world/@goggames
- The New Stack: https://hachyderm.io/@TheNewStack
- Mozilla: https://mozilla.social/@mozilla
- Rust foundation: https://social.rust-lang.org/@rust
- Free Software Foundation: https://hostux.social/@fsf
- Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://mastodon.social/@eff
- Greta Thunberg: https://mastodon.nu/@gretathunberg
Regarding individuals, I’m following a bunch of software developpers. I’m mostly interested in topics, hence I prefer Lemmy by far.
